


Four Epilogues

by imperfectcircle



Series: Stories by theme: My arguments with canon [6]
Category: Handsome Devil (2016)
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Epilogue, M/M, POV Outsider, if they want them, queer characters deserve kisses, which let's be clear Connor definitely does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 06:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11800158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/pseuds/imperfectcircle
Summary: The keen reader will have noticed that I still hadn’t answered Connor’s question. That first one he asked me, right at the start of all this: Was I gay?





	1. Ned: Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to everyone who watched Handsome Devil, immediately googled some variant on _handsome devil fanfic_ or _handsome devil ao3_ , and found themselves here. 
> 
> Continuity: Spoilers for the whole film. The film is deliberately ambiguous about time setting (Britpop is "old", but we never see any mobile phones / computers / etc) so I've decided it's set in 2016 and Mr Curly just has very firm views about the role of modern electronics in education. 
> 
> Content note: I've not tagged this underage, because I don't think a handful of kisses between a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old is underage, but please be aware in case your cut-offs differ from mine.

You’d have thought that after outing my best friend, getting suspended from school, running away from home (well, car), inciting a rebellion against an autocratic rugby coaching despot, and actually caring about a rugby game for the first time in my entire life, I’d have been done with dramatics for the term. 

You would have been wrong. 

The keen reader will have noticed that I still hadn’t answered Connor’s question. That first one he asked me, right at the start of all this: Was I gay? 

The truth was, it hadn’t mattered. There was no point liking girls at an all boys school where the only interaction we had with women under the age of 40 was at the heavily supervised annual Wood Hill College - St Kilda’s Tea Dance. There was no point liking boys at an all boys school where I didn’t have so much as a friend, let alone romantic prospects. And at the point when Connor asked me, the good teachers of Wood Hill College hadn’t seen fit to enlighten us that there might be any other genders out there. 

Now it did matter, and I’d ruined it. I hadn’t wanted to be the creepy weirdo who found out his friend liked blokes and immediately thought, wait a minute, _I’m_ a bloke, wayhay. And in a sense I’d got my wish -- instead I was the creepy weirdo who’d found out his friend liked blokes and immediately outed him to the whole school. Still, the end result was the same -- I wasn’t fit to be Connor’s friend, let alone his anything else, and that was that. The fact that he took me back as a friend at all said a lot more about him than it did about me. 

Only. So there were a few things I didn’t mention in my essay. A few things like the way Connor’s lips looked when he was singing, or the curve of his arse in his rugby shorts, or the sound of his voice just after he’d been laughing. But also one thing that wasn’t mine to share -- not that that had stopped me before. When we’d been waiting in the changing room to confront Pascal and restore Connor to his rightful place in the rugby elite, Connor had wanted to hold my hand. 

He hadn’t said anything -- Connor wouldn’t say anything if his hair was on fire. Thinking about it, he’d probably score a winning try, listen to me whine about my parents, write five essays about the nitrogen cycle and all the time swallow his secret pain like the marble-sculpted martyr he is. (That was good, “marble-sculpted martyr”. I should keep that for an actual essay. Mr Sherry would say it’s pretentious, but Mr Sherry can do one after what he said to Connor. Anyway.) He hadn’t asked, and I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen his hand twitch, just slightly, out of the corner of my eye. And I wouldn’t have seen that if I hadn’t been staring guiltily at the floor, thinking about all the ways I’d fucked things up for the only person who’d ever liked me wholly and entirely for who I was. 

So Connor had wanted to hold my hand -- for a second, for the whole ordeal, I don’t know -- and he hadn’t asked, even though I was feeling so guilty at that point I’d have done anything to make him feel better, up to and including streaking in front of the whole stadium. 

The thing about Connor is every man in his life has let him down. His dad’s a sack of shit with a scrotum for a face, who taught him love is conditional and he’s never going to be good enough. Pascal, enough said. Mr Sherry might have wanted to be our very own Dead Poets’ Society, but right there and then he was actually more of the same -- another dickbag who could have accepted Connor for who he was, but instead told him to hide away. His old school could have found out why he was fighting, given him some support or pastoral care or whatever else it is they’re meant to do, but they’d just kicked him out. And I don’t know if I count as a man in his life, but I had very definitely let him down. 

Right. There was Connor, standing there about to confront his worst nightmare, and he couldn’t even ask the total fuckwit who got him into this mess for the support he so desperately needed. 

I didn’t hold his hand. I’m not that brave. I’m not Connor. And honestly, I didn’t know if it would be welcome. Maybe he’d decided not to ask for my support because he’d remembered why he needed it in the first place. 

But afterwards. This was what I wanted to say to him: “Connor, you’re amazing. You’re brave, inspiring, and kind. I’m so, so sorry about everything, but this isn’t me trying to make it up to you, and this isn’t me trying to take advantage. This is me telling you what I should have told you as soon as I found out about you. I’m bisexual. I want to be your friend. But if you want more, now or ever, that’s what I want too.”

I didn’t say that. Of course. What I actually said was, “Connor.”

And then he looked at me, his whole face and body like that one twitch of his fingers, like there was so much he wanted but he could never ask. And I thought about all the shit Connor’s been through, all the pressure to be a big strong man and take the lead and make decisions and go it alone in a world that should have been much softer and much kinder to him. And I thought: If I get this wrong, we’ll get over it. He’s forgiven me worse. But if I get this right, maybe I can give him something no one’s ever given him before. Maybe I can take that leap for him. 

I took his face in my hands and gave him a moment to back away. He looked at me and he looked at my mouth and he still didn’t say anything. His lips are-- I don’t know what to tell you. You’ve either seen them or you haven’t, and that’s all there is too it. 

I kissed him closed mouth, my lips against his, my heart beating a mile a minute, his hands falling to my hips like they belonged there. We leaned into each other, breathing together, swapping these chaste little soft kisses, his lips following mine every time I made to pull away. If I could have dipped him I would have, but he’s half a foot taller than me and built like a brick shithouse. So instead I kissed him like we were making our own Suede poster. I opened my mouth against his and it wasn’t like it is in the films, but it didn’t have to be: it was him and it was me and it was perfect.


	2. Connor: The Essay

When Ned had told everyone about Connor, it had felt like. Like the singing practice. When Connor had started to sing and Ned hadn’t, that time before everything, when Connor had still thought he could have the best of both worlds, when he hadn’t known he wasn’t getting the best of either. 

Before, Connor had never wanted people to know about him, but if he had, if he’d had a safe, quiet space inside himself where he’d thought about how it could go and not be world-ending, he’d have thought they’d do it together. Maybe on the last day of sixth year. Ned would, could offer Connor his hand and say, “Shall we?” and Connor wouldn’t have to say anything, would just take Ned’s hand and let Ned turn to the whole school and say something clever and biting, like, “Suck it, losers, we were having more sex than you the whole time,” only actually clever, Ned-clever, not just what Connor might have come up with in his safe, quiet daydream he made sure never to have. And Connor would kiss him in front of all of them, in front of the rugby team and Pascal and Mr Sherry and everyone, and it would be okay. Or something. 

As it was, even when Ned took the microphone, even when he opened with, “I’ll tell you who’s gay,” Connor had still half-expected him to say, “We are.” But instead, Ned had left him all alone. That was it, he should have led with that: When Ned had told everyone about Connor, Connor had felt alone. 

Afterwards, Ned kept trying to talk about it. He’d back off for a while, try to respect it when Connor said things like, “It’s okay now,” or, “We don’t need to,” but he’d return to it, again and again, until Connor looked him straight in the eye and said, “Please.” 

Even with that, they fell back into friendship more easily than either of them had expected. Connor had thought it would keep hurting sharp and bright like a newly broken bone -- but even broken bones don’t hurt like that forever, and Ned hadn’t broken anything, not really. He thought he had, Mr Curly certainly thought he had, and maybe Connor would too if it weren’t Ned, if Ned hadn’t said, “It’s my team if you’re playing on it,” and meant it, if Connor hadn’t been too angry for too long at himself and his dad and the whole world to make room for any more hate. Connor got to forgive him, that was a thing he could choose. So he did, because it was Ned, after all. 

And three months later, Ned wrote the essay. The Essay. It has capitals in Connor’s head. There were four seats at the final. Mr Curly went, and Mr Sherry, and Connor had assumed Ned’s dad and stepmum would fly back, but Ned had said no, don’t bother, I want Connor to have a seat. The fourth seat nearly went begging, until Mr Sherry said, easy as you like, “Can I bring my fella? All he hears about is when you little shits are driving me to drink. I want him to see why I bother.”

Ned had been angry at Mr Sherry, because one of the times Ned had wanted to talk and Connor hadn’t, Connor had somehow told him what Mr Sherry had said that night when Before had become After. But Connor had forgiven him, and so Ned had to, too, “Unless I want to make the case that his ill-advised words were somehow even worse than mine,” he’d said, and Connor had thrown a pillow at him. 

“I’d like that,” Ned had said to Mr Sherry. “I’d really like that.”

After The Essay, Connor thought, _Oh. We should have talked._

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t go up and sing on your own. I shouldn’t have left you there.”

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have outed you like a spoiled child, so we’ve all done things we regret.” Ned looked uncomfortable. Exposed. But he’d wanted Connor there for The Essay. He’d insisted. 

Connor wasn’t stupid. He knew sometimes next to Ned he looked it, that his brain didn’t go as fast in as many directions, but he wasn’t. He could listen when people talked. He could put things together. 

He’d spent the whole year thinking Ned was the one leading them. Ned had put the Berlin Wall up, Ned had taken it down. He’d thought when Ned made a decision, that was it, that was the decision. Be friends, or not. Be a team, or not. Even when Ned told him different, told him, “All I can hear in my head is your voice,” told him, “It makes me want to follow you.” 

“I did that, and you still wanted to be my friend,” Connor said, figuring it out as he spoke. “Or--?”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Ned hadn’t sounded like this reading the essay. He hadn’t sounded like this for months, not since he’d tried to follow Connor into hostile territory and Connor had pushed him away. “Just because we both like, because we’re both -- you know -- it doesn’t mean, I don’t expect anything from you. I never have.”

 _Did_ Connor know? Ned sounded like he thought it was obvious, like Ned had told him and Connor had-- Oh. Like Ned had tried to tell him, and Connor had said, “It’s okay now,” or, “We don’t need to,” or, once, ending it all, “Please.” 

If he was being honest, he had known. He’d known and thought if Ned had wanted him, if Ned had looked at him and seen someone worth wanting, he would have done something about it. 

“We should have talked,” Connor said. “I should have told you.”

Ned was looking down and away now. Embarrassed? Ashamed? Please not still guilty. He didn’t speak. 

Connor took a breath. “I should have told you I wanted you. I want you. To be my boyfriend, if you want.”

Ned stared straight at him, mouth open. Connor could see what was coming next. Ned would try to say something sincere, but halfway between his brain and his mouth it would become, _Why, Connor Masters, you big softie,_ or, _You want us to go steady?_ and it wouldn’t ruin the moment, because nothing could, not with the way Ned was looking at him, hungry and happy all at once, not with the way Connor could feel the blood singing in his veins, but this was Connor’s moment, like The Essay had been Ned’s, and what he wanted to do was kiss him, just that, nothing else. 

So he did.


	3. Dan Sherry: Arthur

“Walter seemed nice,” Arthur says. “And that boy, Ned. He’s the ‘gay bars are poorly signposted’ one?”

Neither of them are into holding hands out here where anyone could see, but Dan gives Arthur a good shove for that. “No, he’s the one who outed the ‘gay bars are poorly signposted, my wise advice as your teacher is to stay closeted and alone’ one.”

“Oh.” Arthur isn’t judging him. Arthur is sad that he’s judging himself. Arthur reads Eve Sedgwick and Audre Lorde in his spare time, and he says things like, “No one has a duty to be ‘out’ for anyone else. The violence of the heteropatriarchy includes taking away our ability to act with honour,” while Dan is just trying to have a quiet pint and moan about his day. 

“I love you,” Dan says. He really does. He doesn’t say it enough. The streets are dark and empty and he does, he loves Arthur so painfully much.

Arthur shoves him back. “Yeah, yeah.”

They walk in silence for a while. 

“So Ned’s the one you made sing in front of an audience?” 

Dan groans out loud. “What is this, Daniel Sherry’s Greatest Teaching Failures, 2016 Edition?” 

Arthur laughs. Quietly, happily. How Dan’s ridiculous heart can love him so much and have the energy left over to do anything else, he doesn’t know. 

“Just trying to understand. Ned is the sensitive one who lashed out at his friend for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand; Connor is the friend, who definitely is gay and also forgave Ned pretty much instantly for something I don’t know we could get over, if you did that to me.”

“You make it sound like--” Dan stops himself there. “I’m not nearly drunk enough for this.” 

“Pascal’s a bit of all right, though,” Arthur says instead. “He’s the one who whispered lovingly -- oh, sorry, I mean menacingly -- in your ear?” 

Dan makes retching sounds and they shove each other like a couple of schoolboys, laughing as they stumble. 

“Thanks for doing this,” Dan says some time later, the two of them walking in silence again, matching pace, not needing to touch to be in sync. “Meeting Walter like that.” 

“It was important to you.” Arthur makes it sound like it was nothing, but it wasn’t. They’re not either of them out to their families, not either of them willing to hold hands in public or kiss somewhere they don’t know who’s watching. Dan used to worry what if Arthur changed his mind first, what if this brilliant, beautiful man wanted to be out and proud while Dan was still skulking in the closet. Now he worries the other way round -- what if he’s forcing Arthur, the best man he knows, to do things he doesn’t want to do just because Dan’s all fucked up over everything?

“We should talk when we get back to yours,” Dan says suddenly. “Nothing bad. Just--”

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “I was thinking that too. I--” He stops mid-stride. Holds up a hand for silence. Leans in to whisper: “It’s your boys.”

Arthur has ears like a fucking cat. Or a wolf. Something that can hear things much better than Dan can, anyway. Through a series of gestures as excessive as they are charming, Arthur indicates that the boys are just around the corner. They creep forward together, Arthur’s enthusiasm overriding any desire Dan has for those little shits to just leave him alone for one evening, until even Dan can make out what they’re saying. 

“You can’t be sorry.” That’s Ned. “ _I’m_ sorry.”

“I can be sorry.” Connor. Of course he can be sorry. That boy could represent Ireland in the tortured self-doubt Olympics. Dan could train him. “I shouldn’t have--”

“ _I_ shouldn’t have.”

_Why aren’t they kissing?_ Arthur mouths. 

Dan mimes being sick again. He’s all for his not-so-secret favourite pupils finally enjoying some teenaged kicks, just not where he has to think about it. Or hear it. Or watch his bloody boyfriend creep forward like he actually wants to see two teenagers do whatever it is they’re going to do. 

Dan gets out his phone and types: _Stop it. I’m a teacher. I can’t be with a registered sex offender._

In the time it takes him to type that, the boys have moved on to:

“We don’t have to share next term. If you don’t want to.” That’s Connor again. 

“Do you not want to?”

For pity’s sake. Dan very nearly agrees with Arthur. 

Arthur has taken Dan’s phone to read the message. He’s typing something on it, his fingers flying over the keys much faster than Dan and his clumsy luddite hands. 

Arthur pauses before he hands the phone back. He looks like he’s trying to decide something. Dan hopes he’s not weighing up the pros and cons of shouting out encouragement. 

“You’re not gay,” Connor is saying patiently. “I am.” 

Dan doesn’t look, he won’t look, it’s none of his business and he doesn’t want to see anything he won’t be able to unsee, but he itches to cuff them both on the back of the head and tell them to be quiet and listen to each other for a minute, to what’s not being said. 

Instead of more prevarication, there’s a rather promising silence. Arthur grins at him, blindingly handsome in the streetlight -- he makes a thumbs up with one hand, passes over the phone with the other. 

He’s not written something new, just edited Dan’s message: _Stop it,_ it still reads. _I’m a teacher. I can’t live with a registered sex offender._

They don’t kiss, because even in the deserted street that’s not something to do without discussing first, but they smile at each other, wide and happy, as Dan nods silently, wholeheartedly: _Yes._


	4. Fifteen years later

When I was 17, I read a book that changed -- and maybe even saved -- my life. I’ll spare you the details, but looking back, I was never going to be a happy teenager. One day, as I was carving retro band names into my desk and thinking of ways to get expelled, my least hated teacher, Ms Sutton, put a copy of _A Way Into Being_ down in front of me. “Read this,” she said. “And for pity’s sake, it’s s-i-g-u-r-r-o-acute-s. Don’t we teach you children anything?”

We’ve just passed the tenth anniversary of Ned Roche’s debut, coming up for eight years since Ms Sutton burned the spelling of Sigur Rós into my brain, and I’ve never forgotten the feeling of opening up Roche’s collection of essays and feeling deeply, completely known. 

A week later, Ms Sutton made us each write a letter to our personal heroes. Tizzy Harkens, the popular girl on whom I had the kind of maddening, impossible crush only a bullied non-binary kid at an Irish single-sex boarding school can understand, wrote to Nelson Mandela. I wrote to Ned Roche. Ms Sutton mailed it, because of course she did, and Ned Roche wrote back. He’s been a source of kindness and inspiration to me ever since -- one that I can never begin to repay.

(It’s important to note that Nelson Mandela, having died about a decade earlier, did not write back to Tizzy Harkens. So in many ways, I think we can agree I won.)

None of which really explains why when he and his retired rugby superstar husband, Connor Roche-Masters, decided to give one of their rare joint interviews, they requested me. Still, as Roche says in _Six Other Choices_ , “You never learn to stop questioning it. How did I get so lucky? Why does he love me? But you learn to be happy anyway. All the questions you can dream up can’t change the fact that you did and he does.”

Roche welcomes me cheerfully, kissing me on both cheeks and using the lower half of his body to keep an eager, rambunctious dog from escaping out into the street. 

“Hi!” he says. “Down! Sit! Pixie, sit. It’s so good to see you, thanks for coming. Pixie, stay. Stay!”

Roche-Masters doesn’t drink, and Roche has surprisingly little of a sweet tooth, so I’ve brought them homemade olive bread, which I hand over to Roche as I try to convince Pixie, their part-spaniel, part-not-spaniel mongrel to stay on all four paws. She’s not convinced. 

“Connor will love this,” Roche assures me about the olive bread, beaming with that teenaged smile he brings out whenever he talks about his husband. He raises his voice to add, “It’s olive bread, love! Homemade.” Then, to me, “I’ll put the kettle on.” 

“I love it,” Roche-Masters calls from another room. 

The cheerful domesticity of it continues as we all -- me, Roche, Roche-Masters and the dog -- congregate in their huge, well-appointed kitchen. “You don’t mind?” Roche half-asks, half-tells me. “It’s nicer in here. Cozy.” You could fit my entire flat in this kitchen and have space left over, I don’t reply. 

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today,” Roche-Masters says when we’re all settled. Roche shoots him a look that says at the same time both, _I can’t believe you said that,_ and, _I can absolutely believe you said that._

They roll their eyes at each other. I pet the dog. 

“Connor’s father passed away last year,” Roche says. They wave off my condolences. “He left Connor a lot of money.”

“Too much money,” Roche-Masters interjects. 

“We thought about it. Connor’s doing all right, with the book tour and the sponsorship, and I pull my weight,” says the recipient of over €1m in royalties, grants and speaking fees in 2029 alone. 

They exchange glances. 

Roche continues: “So we wanted to set up a fund. With Connor’s dad’s money, and some of mine, and some of Connor’s. For kids like us, people who were kids like us.” His gesture includes all three of us. “Bullied queer kids.”

He and Roche-Masters shift slightly, and I realise they’re holding hands under the table. Roche-Masters catches me looking and smiles at me, the full Roche-Masters Ireland’s Sexiest Men single-handedly making broken noses hot again smile. It’s quite something. 

“We don’t think we can do it better than the charities already out there, but we can donate more. We can fund them -- we want to fund them.” Roche is leaning forward, radiating earnest conviction. “Things are better than they were, but they’re not anywhere near good enough. We want to do right by the kids who aren’t being done right by anyone else.”

We eat the olive bread, and I resolve to write to Ms Sutton, my least hated teacher from the worst year of my life, and tell her about my day.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read and enjoyed this, please do let me know! I wrote it out of a deep sense of kinship for everyone who felt the film was missing something -- if that was you and this went some way to filling that gap, it would be lovely to know. :)
> 
> And if you like, you can come say hi on twitter - I'm [@krfabian](https://twitter.com/krfabian/), where I tweet about all manner of nerd stuff (and my original fiction).


End file.
